Open Face Helmet Injury & Tips to Avoid It

Open Face Helmet Injury & Tips to Avoid It

by

Jeffrey
July 11, 2020
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Now just think about it.

You have a helmet that does not have any shield…

It can’t protect you from even the smallest of things on the road, such as a mosquito, from getting into your eyes.

Or road debris from hitting your face.

How can it then protect you from an injury when you actually fall on your face in case of an accident?

This is the reason why open-face helmets aren’t the best in terms of protection from injuries, especially on the face area, if in some exceptional case the helmet doesn’t already fly out of your head and doesn’t risk your entire head to an injury.

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Like this guy above is saying something similar, that he’s going to switch over to a full-face helmet just because of bugs, why would you not then consider switching for your own dear life?

A study shows…

Three-quarter of helmeted MTW drivers were wearing a full-face helmet at the time of the accident. Victims wearing a full-face helmet were about three times less likely to have sustained injury to the face, compared to victims wearing another type of helmet (adjusted OR = 0.31; 95% CI: 0.11–0.83). On the other hand, the presence of non-facial head injury did not vary significantly according to whether a full-face or other helmet was worn (adjusted OR = 0.84; 95% CI: 0.33–2.13).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6544930/

Although this is not a motorcycle-related study, it certainly shows that a full-face helmet is clearly better at protecting your face from injuries, much better than an open-face helmet.

They also added in the conclusion section:

Our study suggests that full-face helmets provide better facial protection for MTW users compared to other types of helmets, whereas there is no evidence of any difference in protection afforded the skull or the brain.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6544930/

And to this, I’d say that when a full-face helmet is proven to protect against facial injuries which is mainly because your head hit the ground, it then must mean that the impact to the head is much less than compared to an open-face helmet, where you face directly hits the ground making it an impactful hit and a more fatal one. Meaning there’s less chance of brain injury if a part of your head (face) didn’t hit the ground because the helmet was in the way of that impact, which then has padding inside, so the impact has even less of an effect, decreasing the chances of a brain injury.

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This is just a theory with which I came upon pondering over the facts, so don’t quote me on this, but this makes sense I believe that a full-face helmet would lessen the chance of getting a brain injury as well, along with preventing a facial one.

Open Face Helmet Injury & Tips to Avoid It

This graphic above also shows how important it is to wear a full-face helmet, as 34.6% of the impact is mainly on the face area, which is not covered when you are wearing an open-face.

Open Face Helmet Injuries

Here I am going to share a few pictures that I found of people who’ve experienced injuries because the open-face helmet design couldn’t protect them as they’d have liked to be protected.

Some bad experiences, but good life lessons!

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How to Avoid an Open Face Helmet Injury?

The first thing you need to do is to get an excellent quality full-face helmet that’s durable, comfortable, and is breathable.

Because this is the main reason people opt for open-face helmets, they feel that the full-face helmets are bulky, are difficult to breathe in and cause shoulder pain, and so on.

Also, when you actually do get a full-face helmet, make sure that it has a good amount of padding inside, to save from those brain-injury related issues. In case you hit the ground, you will save your face, but to save your brain from the shock of this hit, you’ll need the padding there to absorb it all off.

Even though it’s not there for protection but for comfort, it will still offer SOME help to absorb the impact.

Better than nothing being there, isn’t it?

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Bryce is an experienced motorcycle rider with years of experience caring for motorcycles. His natural fondness for motorcycles have made him come up with LetsGoForARide.com, which is dedicated to answering and teaching you how to care for your bike with the care it requires. LetsGoForARide is the one of his important lifework in reaching out to communities of motorcycle enthusiasts on how to take care of their bike and choosing the correct spare part.